Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin salutes as NASA Administrator Charles Bolden looks on during a wreath laying ceremony as part of agency's Day of Remembrance at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, Feb. 1, 2013.

There’s a permanence to space that far exceeds the fleeting lives of the people who come to explore it. This never seems truer than when we remember the people who have perished in the effort. Feb. 1 is NASA’s official day of remembrance—a date chosen partly because it recalls the Feb. 1, 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia and the seven astronauts aboard it. The gallery of space images that follows has nothing to do with the astronauts and cosmonauts who have been lost in the past 60 years—and yet everything to do with them too.